Where the stories are

We can't help but live in stories.But you may not find the story you're living (the one that opens or closes possibilities for you) in your thoughts. In fact, the narrative you've taken up in your life may hardly be visible to you by looking there at all.Mostly, the stories we're inhabiting that shape us so much are in the background. Or, put another way, they're often so close to us we can't see them. See this previous post, this one, and this one, for an idea of what I mean.So, where to look?You could start off by watching your actions closely for a while: who you speak to and who you avoid, and what you actually say; how you get your needs met; how you ask for things; the kinds of places you go; what you do impulsively or repeatedly; what you pay attention to and what not. So often what we're doing is not what we think we're doing, and our familiar explanations of ourselves miss so much.And you could watch what happens in your body: when you tighten up, and when you relax; the situations in which you hold your breath more than usual; when you collapse - even just a little - and when you are able to support yourself with more strength; when you armour yourself so you won't have to feel something; when strong emotions - love, disgust, rage, hope, resentment, gratitude, fear - arise.What kind of story accounts for what you find?Sometimes a compassionate, skilled observer who's willing to share their impressions can help: a friend, a family member, a colleague, or a coach. They may be able to find words to express what's harder for you to see about the narrative from which you're living, leading, and acting.Seeing our stories for the first time can be enormously liberating. Because then you can find out that you are not the story itself. You're way bigger than that. And you can allow yourself to have your story rather than being had by it.And this, at last, opens up the possibility that there are other stories you could live - stories with much more space in them, and way more possibility.

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Dry and lifeless

Here's the difficulty.What's downstream is more often what looks measurable, or at least easiest to talk about. Behaviour, output, hours worked, jobs done, calls answered, sales made, targets reached.What's upstream - from which what's downstream flows - often seems harder to talk about and harder to address:

The background culture and narratives of your organisation. The kind of person you are. How alive you and the people around you are willing to be. The conversations that are being had, and aren't being had. People's inner worlds of meaning, hope, doubt and longing. The quality of openness, courage, truthfulness people embody. The pervasive and often hidden effect of the inner critic. The background mood - fear, commitment, sincerity, cynicism, resentment.

What happens upstream profoundly shapes what happens downstream, but there's no simple, predictable relationship between one and the other.We've become terrified of working with what's upstream because it's not measurable and because we can't establish a straightforward cause and effect connection with what emerges downstream.Working with what's upstream calls on us to face ourselves and others, to turn away from what we're denying, to change ourselves rather than expecting everything else to change around us, to admit that we don't know.But more and more we want to control everything, to predict everything, to never be surprised or disturbed. And so we treat only what's downstream as 'real' and dismiss what's upstream as irrelevant.And rather than face our fear and uncertainty, it leaves us failing to work in the place that could most address our concerns, and adopting dry, lifeless initiatives, change programmes, and measures instead.

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For granted

Ordinary life can seem so - ordinary - that it's natural to slip into taking it for granted, as if it were obvious and straightforward that we're here, and as if it will go on this way for ever.Many traditions have practices to remind us that it's anything but ordinary to be able to move, breathe, think, make breakfast, travel, work, love, argue, sleep, produce, write, speak. And that it's anything but ordinary to have a body that can do all this again and again, which can heal itself so often without us having to do anything. And that none of it lasts nearly as long as we might hope.Here's a morning blessing from Judaism, said by some as they use the bathroom for the first time in the day, that I think is particularly brilliant for its combination of straightforwardness about life and death, piercing insight, and gentle humour.

Blessed are you, Eternal One, Creator of everything, who formed human beings in wisdom, creating within us openings and vessels. It is revealed and known before you that if any one of them is opened or closed it would be impossible to remain alive and stand before You. Blessed are you, Eternal One, who heals all flesh and performs such wonders.

Finding daily practices to remind us of our bodies' unlikeliness and wonder - even in the most ordinary of circumstances - does not require religious belief of any kind of course (and in Judaism, by the way, belief is secondary to practice, the actions that shape the world of possibility and relationship again and again).All it requires is opening to life. And reminding ourselves that we are each here on account of nothing that we did.And that by one of the most unlikely miracles imaginable we each find ourselves for a brief time, embodied, in a world ready and waiting for our participation.

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Getting soaked

If you want things to change in your relationship with others, it's no good just wishing for it.You're going to have to change: first changing your story about the situation (everything you think you're sure about, especially who's to blame and why you're so stuck), and then you're going to have to change your practices: the actions you're taking that are keeping you just the way you are, so that others stay as they are.Wishing that other people will change without you doing this is like going out in the rain without an umbrella and hoping against hope that you won't get wet.If you want others to join you, you're going to have to commit to being someone who can be joined rather than one who puts up barriers and obstacles along the way. And you're going to have to give up being someone who waits to be found, but reaches out actively to find others and draw them close.Like I said, if you want to change your relationship with others, it's no good just wishing for it. Because if you do, you're going to carry on getting soaked.

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Upstream

Downstream: 'Behaviours'Upstream: The kind of person you are.What's downstream flows from what's upstream.All too often, at least in the organisational world, we try to work with what's downstream without paying any attention to what's upstream.We invent behaviour frameworks, cajole people, and tell them what to do without giving any consideration to what it takes to be the kind of person who has new ways of acting available to them.We're looking at what we so urgently want to be present without looking at its becoming.It's like tipping fish into a dry river and expecting them to survive without doing the difficult and important work of attending to the spring. And just because it's quick and obvious doesn't mean it's the right thing to do, or that it will go any way to addressing the difficulties you're experiencing.

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The way we're working isn't working

I know. You take getting things done seriously. In fact, it's pretty much all you think about - how much you've done, how much is yet undone, and all the consequences if you don't stay on top of everything all the time.But how seriously do you take your capacity to get things done?So many of us are running continuously on empty, or near to empty, because we've forgotten about this. We think that if we just keep on pushing ourselves, perhaps eventually we'll have the opportunity to rest. But we know, really where that ends. In exhaustion, in collapse, in burn-out, in illness. And, more immediately, it seriously erodes our capacity to do anything important, to do anything well.So instead of looking all the time at how much you're getting done, how about shifting your attention to how much energy you have? You'll reap huge dividends by attending seriously to sleep, to rest, to exercise, to eating well, to cultivating a wider range of interests that touch you, to building and maintaining supportive and nurturing relationships with others.if you're struggling and suffering, it may be because you haven't looked here yet. Or you've looked but haven't take action.If you'd like some support in this - rigorous research, and many practical suggestions - you could read 'Be Excellent at Anything' by Tony Schwartz. (I thought the book's original title 'The Way We're Working Isn't Working' pointed even more crisply into the difficulties so many people experience.) He's done a wonderful job of bringing together understanding from many different disciplines to show us what's possible, and what it takes, to live a life in which we're able do what's important to us because of the way we're taking care of ourselves.

Love

Mostly we experience ourselves as separate from one another.We experience the way our bodies are separated from one another in space, the way our personal life history is distinct from that of others, and the apparent hiddenness of our inner world. And we conclude that in some fundamental sense the distance between us and others is unbridgeable, that we are alone.And it's no wonder, because as well as what we see, the public discourse of the past 300 years or so has encouraged us to relate to life in this way. Rene Descartes' move to portray us as isolated individual minds, separated from everything else, plays a big part in this. And our increasingly individualistic political and economic narratives have split from one another still further.But when we look this way we're looking only at the results of something, not the something itself that underlies it all. We take our separate and individual bodies as proof of our separateness, but we are looking too far 'downstream' as it were.If we were to look further upstream we'd see not just our separateness but an endless process of becoming that produces it all.We'd see the whole of human life renewing itself through the biological processes of conception and birth, each new generation of human beings emerging from the bodies of those of us already here. And we'd see human life becoming itself through language, culture, conversations and ideas, through the grand stories and narratives that shape us even as we shape them.Looking downstream we see our physical separateness. Looking upstream we see that we are expressions of a unified and ceaseless process of becoming that happens through us and because of us, and that produces all of human life.Sometimes we gaze at others and realise this. We see them not as separate, but as an expression of the selfsame life that we are. We realise that 'they' are really another aspect of that which makes us 'ourselves'.And this, I think, is what we call love.

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Embracing the storm

Your attempts to control life can take you only so far.You can try to eliminate all risk. The cost? Less and less room to move. A smaller space in which to live. Because life is inherently risky. And the only way to avoid it is to avoid life itself (a strategy with risks all of its own).Or you can try to never feel fear. Or shame, embarrassment, uncertainty, confusion. But to do this you'll also have to shrink your life down to tiny, rigid proportions. You'll have to live a life in which you do nothing and in which nothing can touch you. And even then, you'll still feel them.Better to give up the idea altogether that you can shape life to meet you. That you can win.Time instead to embrace the possibility of defeat. Give up endlessly fighting off what's difficult in life, and allow it to fight with you for a while instead. Let life in, in all of its fury and strength. Learn, as in the words of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, that whoever allows themselves to be defeated often comes away:

"proud and strengthenedand great from that harsh hand,that kneaded him as if to change his shape.

Winning does not tempt that man.This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,by constantly greater beings."

from Rainer Maria Rilke 'The Man Watching'

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Exhausted

Mostly the stories we're living are invisible to us. They're like the air we breathe, or the water we swim in.If you're someone who never rests, who keeps going even when you're exhausted - as so many of us do - do any of these stories shed light on the way you're living?Are you taking yourself to be

An orphan? Carrying a huge burden given to you by others that cannot be put down. There's nowhere to rest. Nobody who can really be relied on. Nowhere that's safe. All you can do is to keep on carrying, carrying, carrying, knowing that life is ultimately exhausting and nobody can help you.

A frantic hare? Always running to get to the finish line. The point of life is to hurry, hurry, hurry so that you can be there first. If you stop, even for a moment, you'll lose the race. Because everyone else is apparently running too.

The emperor in new clothes? Trying to look good or at least acceptable, but fearing that everyone else can secretly see that it's all a façade. So you have to work hard all the time to keep up an image, and not let any cracks show, in case you get found out.

Atlas? Holding up the world for everyone with unceasing, superhuman effort. If you don't do it, nobody else will, and then the sky will fall in and everything will come apart.

And if not one of these stories, is there another one you can find that will explain why you're so sure you can never stop, never take care of yourself?

Where did you get your story from? From your family? From the wider culture into which you were born?

And what happens if you let go of your story, just a little, and find out that it can't be completely true? Perhaps then you'll find out that you'll still be alive, and people will still be around, even if you lie down for a while.

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